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Those who talk most strenuously about seeing “both sides” often mean they speak from one side about the other in order to invalidate it. That is why the relentless work of individuals and small groups becomes so important in putting out the realities mainstream media keeps out—the protests, the suffering, the vigils, the commentary, and strikingly, the constant fact checks. When people with a fraction of the resources mainstream media has can do fact checks, while big media merely reports the statements of dominant powers as facts, tells you where big media is at, yaniki, not really interested in fact. The claim of objectivity is merely a theatre of acting detached, while being willfully biased. Talk of facts is often simply the performance of something that looks or sounds like a fact to enact that bias.

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This manipulation cannot be countered only by facts, but also by passion, belief, and sometimes art which reveals the constructs of media. A most powerful instance of this was the satire Bassem Youssef performed in his appearance on the Piers Morgan Uncensored show. By constantly saying “I agree with you Piers, those SOB Palestinians should be killed”, he refused to assume the role of a defensive opposition that Piers Morgan tried to cast him in. He subverted the binary narrative that Morgan was architecting in which Morgan stood for truth and goodness, a judge in media court, demanding that Youssef prove himself innocent—a proxy for Palestine being guilty until proven innocent. By becoming a mirror image of Morgan, Youssef turned Morgan’s gaze onto his own statements to reveal their hypocrisy. This unsettled and refused the moral authority people like Morgan assume (yaniki, white is right types) allowed its immorality and lopsidedness to emerge as Morgan sought power in schoolmarm admonishments of “please mind your language”.

These moments underline that the road to co-existence lies in us retaining autonomy over our critical thinking and capacity for compassion, and wresting this autonomy back from the mind games of the mainstream media.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com